The main criticism of Trump’s trade policy by congressional Democrats and most presidential candidates is that the president should focus exclusively on China and enlist Canada, Mexico and the European Union in an anti-China coalition.

In its maniacal drive for higher profits, increasingly generated by the parasitic inflation of stock prices, finance capital and its mouthpieces in politics and the media demand that more cheap money be made available through the slashing of interest rates.

Calls for “reform” of the capitalist economy advanced by billionaire CEOs in the US and supported by “left” economists are motivated by deep fears of the implications of the shift to the left in broad sections of the American population.

Miners’ union sells out five-month long strike at Sibanye Stillwater in South Africa

The South African Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union agreed to a deal ending the five-month strike by gold miners on the same terms as the “slave labour” agreement signed with three other unions.

Trump emerged from a meeting with chief Chinese trade negotiator Liu He to say it would take at least four weeks to reach an agreement as he declined to set a date for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

As global elites gather at Davos

The UK-based charity Oxfam International has reported that the wealth of the world’s billionaires grew by $900 billion last year, a rise of 12 percent, while 3.8 billion people—half the world’s population—saw their wealth decline by 11 percent.

The economic warfare pursued by the Trump administration with the support of broad sections of the US political establishment is coming home to roost in the form of a global slowdown spreading to the United States.

The China slowdown is part of a global process, exposing the fraudulent claim that the global economy had finally “turned the corner” after the deep recession produced by the financial crisis a decade ago.